Earlier this week I wrote about location-based applications -- if not apps -- having great potential, even as the respected Pew Internet Project found that the needle hasn't really moved much yet, and is still in single digits even among the early adopter crowd.
I got some interestingly unexpected feedback, from agency people and from readers. Among the expected was a Tweet from Ian Shaffer, CEO of Deep Focus, who Tweeted: "Won't be big. It will be biggest." Word of mouth marketing guru David Binkowski agreed, to a point: "I agree it'll go up, but agencies pushing it on clients were doing them a disservice with such low #s."
It's sometimes a matter of faith to see a certain future looking at the same facts in which others see nothing -- or worse, the opposite. But this is what entrepreneurs do, and the wildly successful ones see potential in something that doesn't even have a name for the rest of us yet.
A reader wrote directly to say he already considered -- parenthetically -- Foursquare a failure and that wide adoption of check-in services would not happen because businesses wouldn't get involved in great enough numbers. They wouldn't, he reasoned, because buy-in by potential customers would always be small. The silent majority surfs, does e-mail and may like to have those things along with them wherever they go, he seemed to argue, but leveraging that into a massive geo-crazy mass was unlikely.
I'm not sure you have to be everything to everyone to avoid being a considered a failure. TV shows are smash hits with 10 million viewers. A book is wildly successful if 100,000 copies are sold. I frankly don't think Foursquare is a failure or is doomed to failure, though the company might not remain independent -- getting your startup sold for a ton of money also usually an indication of success.
But I do think that things which passively help people are more likely to succeed -- as defined by super mass adoption -- than those which require intervention. TV requires you to turn it on, change channels, and lean back. Video games require you to lean forward and never lose your concentration. The former appeals to literally everyone, the latter a small subset (relatively speaking). And yet gaming is a huge business.
People are also willing to give up lots of private information, or are indifferent about it -- witness the success of Facebook. So I don't think that's going to be the big friction either.
I think location-based services that are integrated with other things of value are the ones that will hugely resonate. So, you use Google for lots of things and now Google tells you what's around you wherever you are. You don't have to do anything but launch a browser, which you do 1,345 times a day. Facebook entices you to run their app in the background all the time -- why not? Smartphone manufacturers even sell their phones now as social network delivery systems -- and then say when you connect with your friends (which you'll do anyway) you can see where they are and, by the way, here's a store with stuff on sale which Facebook knows you like.
It will become natural and expected to be informed, personally, about proximate things of interest.
Whether an individual company can commercialize that enough to be a "winner" is another matter. Water used to be private property, but it isn't really the case anymore.
The winners will be the ones who figure out how leverage that power, not the ones who think they can own it.
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See Also:
- Geo-Location
- Foursquare
- Facebook Launches 'Check-In' Service to Connect People in Real ...
- Google Latitude Broadcasts Your Location
- Smartphone Users Aren't Very Geocentric, But Watch This Space ...
- Facebook Launches 'Check-In' Service to Connect People in Real ...
- Facebook Seeks to Make All Phones Facebook Phones
